Here’s my match report for Round 2, 2024 against the Broncos. It's a bloody long one that I've put a lot of thought, time and effort into, so I hope you enjoy.
Overview
Heading into Round 2, I think we all expected to see improvement. I expected us to build on the great 50 minutes we played in Round 1 but do it for longer and tighten our defence. It was anything but. Dreadful night for us. That’s really the only way I can describe it. Completely and utterly dreadful. So bad in fact, that I don’t even know if we can take much away from that apart from negatives and things we need to work on. Honestly, this is potentially a new low for me, even considering last year as I can’t remember a game where we dished up that much bullshit.
Error, after error, after error. That’s all it was all game apart from the eight minutes after halftime which coincidently is the only period of the match we actually played well and looked great. Apart from that, the whole night was just errors, frustration, fatigue and questionable defence. That pretty much sums up the game.
Supremely disappointing as the Broncos were way off there game and if we even played 70 to 80% well, we probably win that easily. The most frustrating game I’ve experienced in a while, it was not a good watch at all.
Attack
I thought we were pretty decent with the ball over in Vegas, but the boys really took a massive step back in Brisbane on Thursday night. A massive step back. Our attack was diabolical really.
I don’t have a massive issue with our yardage game because when we actually held the ball, we made decent meters. However, I do think it still could have been better. As a whole, I don’t think the boys, particularly the forwards, were aggressive enough with their running. It was a lot of what I can ‘mid’ runs where they don’t run full tit, but it’s not a ‘soft’ carry if that makes sense. Those kinds of carries made decent enough meters, but I do think it could have been better. This is evidence by the three sets we had straight after half time. Go back and watch it and look at how dialled in everyone is there. The energy is up, and all the boys are carrying as hard as they can. Look at the meters we made in that period, we were well and truly rolling. However, that dropped off once we started making errors again. So that part of our game was okay, I can live with it, but it still leaves room for improvement.
The part of our game with the ball that I am not okay with is of course the errors. It is just completely and utterly unacceptable and incompetent at this level for a team to be making that many errors. We had f**king 14 errors for f**k sake!! And I think 10 of them came in the first half or something like that. How the heck does that even happen? It was like the entire side was complacent and showed a complete lack of respect for the ball. Awful. It wasn’t just the number of errors either, it was the type of errors we were making. I remember Warran Smith saying during commentary that we had the full house of errors, and he wasn’t wrong. Anything you can think of, we did it. A lot were simple, unforced errors due to a lack of concentration, just clean drops which is not acceptable. There were a few in contact. But then other stuff like getting caught downtown, blockers on the kickers, kicking out on the full, an accidental offside for kicking into our own player, losing the scrum against the feed etc. It really was every error under the sun and most of them just shouldn’t be happening. It shows a complete lack of care, focus and attention to detail.
The most frustrating part of these errors too was when we made them. It honestly felt like every time we had something good going, were starting to build or had Brisbane under a little bit of pressure, we’d make a mistake, relieve all the pressure, throw it away and just completely let them back in. That’s twice in the first two games this year where we’ve got on top (I know we drew level in this Round 2 game, but we were on top), and then failed to complete the following set which is just unforgivable. In both games, from that point, it was just a downwards spiral that we never recovered from.
The alarming thing about the lack of completions is that it’s not a new issue. This has been happening for half a Season, even longer in fact as it seems like we’ve had issues with our hands since forever. Every week we say on here ‘we have to complete our sets,’ and every week we hear the players and coach say the same thing, but we continue to dish up shit and it continues to be an issue? What is being done to fix it?? I’m at my whit’s end. When we hold the ball, as we saw in Round 1, we can be a good Footy side and look decent. I truly believe that, and the boys have proved that. But it seems in both games, and especially in this one, that when we can’t hold it and show no respect for ball security, we just fold. Fit it lads once and for all for f**k sake.
Aside from all the errors, I thought our attack was terrible and a massive step backwards. It’s like the game plan was flawed. We tried to go around them for most of the game and it simply and quite obviously just didn’t work. Our backline was so much slower than there’s so how was that ever going to work? More often than not, we played too lateral and went far too sideways. The Broncos just lapped this up all game. Look at how we attacked in the eight-minute period where we scored the two tries, it was as direct as it gets pretty much, and we looked great! So why did we continue to try and play around them when going through them and playing hard and direct was the way to go? Poor tactics.
It blows my mind that despite all these issues with the ball, we still scored 18 points against one of the better defensive sides in the competition. Just imagine what could have happened if we actually got our game right.
Defence
Terrible over all obviously. Again, we conceded close to 30 points which paints the picture really. That is simply not good enough. However, I do think there is a few factors that contribute to that.
Now, when I say what I’m about to say, I am by no means saying that our D was good because it was not. I am by no means making excuses or trying to make things seem better than they were, I am just trying to analyse things the best I can and the way I see them.
I think the main thing that contributed to our poor defence was obviously the errors we were making. You can’t expect to turn the ball over that much and still defend well. No team can, not even someone like Penrith. If any team made the type of errors we did in the areas and scenarios we did, they’d struggle.
We dropped it that much that we just put ourselves under so much pressure and as a result, fatigue set in more than it normally would for almost the whole game. We defended for way longer than we should be in a normal game which effected defensive effort and defensive reads. So, I think our defence is already bad, but making the number of errors we did just made it look so much worse.
I think that’s a logical way to look at it. And before you scold me, ask yourself, do we concede 28 points if we completed at say 80%? I think the answer is no. Now, I’m not saying our defence was actually okay or acceptable at all because there were still so many awful things, I’m just saying it was heavily affected by fatigue because of our own errors. Surely every Rugby league fan would agree with that when you step back and look at it.
In saying that, you still have to scold the defence over all because it was just simply still not up to first grade level despite the fatigue. Our line speed was very poor, as was the kick chase and the boys hardly showed any resilience to just keep turning up for each other and turn them away. 42 missed tackles at this level is just crazy and should never happen.
So, yea, I don’t know if it’s just me being an optimist, happy to debate it if you think I’m wrong but I do really think it looked worse than it could have if we didn’t turn over the ball so much. Still, it’s the biggest area of concern right now and it hasn’t improved at all. Again buys, fix it for f**k sake and fix it fast.
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